An innovative approach for improving infrastructure resilience

Abstract

Extreme weather events, such as the UK floods of 2007 and cold snap of 2010–2011, stress the importance of infrastructure systems' resilience for business continuity. The interconnected nature of critical national infrastructure and its component parts places demands on the approach used to deal with its subsequent complexity. Recognition of infrastructure as a complex adaptive system has led to the development of an innovative, systems-based methodology for sustainability assessment in the built environment. The methodology consists of a database of causal interactions which, when combined with a process, allows users to produce causal loop diagrams that identify unanticipated systemic behaviour, communicate risks, share knowledge, and identify systemic intervention points that minimise negative consequences and add value in a project context. The approach is applied to highlight the key characteristics of complex adaptive systems that critical national infrastructure exhibits and show how the technique can be used to increase infrastructure resilience and sustainability.

Flood resilience: a systematic review

“…A common theme across the methodologies in this review was to adopt a systems-thinking approach to resilience (34% of papers). Systemsthinking allows all interactions to be taken into account in a multiscale manner by focusing on interrelationships and feedback loops (Balsells et al 2013;Mavhura 2017;Montgomery et al 2012). Whilst each spatial scale has a clear influence on resilience, cross-scale interactions are important in understanding resilience, as changes in one scale can reflect the capacities and outcomes related to another scale (Mavhura 2017).…”

An Integrated Dynamical Modeling Perspective for Infrastructure Resilience

“…A dynamical control system is based on causal loop approaches from which a control is added. Causal loops enable us to highlight interactions and causality in system dynamics in order to identify unexpected systemic behavior [23]. In our approach, we consider a closed-loop system, i.e., the controls depend on the current state of the infrastructure.…”

Contested Modelling: a Critical Examination of Expert Modelling in Sustainability

“…This framework was designed to allow for flexibility in use according to client needs, from detailed issues within schemes or projects to overall performance summaries. The current development of HalSTAR involves linking the diverse concepts within the framework, through the development of causal loop diagrams with the purpose of identifying potentially important feedback loops which could have an impact on the dynamic behavior of solutions proposed through the use of the framework (Montgomery, ).…”

“…The framework is being used to surface issues at different levels of concern to stakeholders but is not a methodology as such for reconciling conflicting stakeholder views. The on‐going development of the causal loop diagrams could be used as a basis for group model‐building activities, and thus approaches a more interpretivist stance (Montgomery, ). The latter may also go some way towards improving reflexivity, with both stakeholders and expert modellers learning more about sustainability issues through engagement over shared models of causal relationships derived from the original HalSTAR framework.…”